Position in chronology
OSP 1, 052
About this tablet
A bread-ration account from Nippur in the Old Akkadian period (roughly 2300–2200 BCE), when southern Iraq was ruled from Sargon's capital at Akkad. A scribe lists portions of bread handed out on a single day — to a work gang of ninety men from the city of Umma, to thirty scribes' sons, to an overseer from Adab, and to a string of named individuals. It is dated to the eleventh day of the month Šu-numun, the 'seed-sowing' month of the Nippur calendar. Such tablets show how a central institution fed workers and officials drawn from several cities across the Sumerian south.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
[A quantity of] bread goes to Aštar-bad. Ninety loaves for the men from Umma, thirty for the scribes' sons, thirty for a group whose name is unreadable, and forty for the overseer from Adab. Then twenty each for a man whose name ends in -ur-gal, for Ur-Ningirsu, for Tutu, for Nesag, for the son of Artu, thirty for Ur-sag-Utu, and twenty for the barber. Issued on the eleventh day of the month of Šu-numun.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobv. 1. [...] bread (for) Aštar-bad 2. 90 men of Umma 3. 30 sons of scribes 4. 30 ... (illegible) 5. 40 (for) the overseer of Adab 6. 20 (for) [...]-ur-gal 7. 20 (for) Ur-Ningirsu 8. 20 (for) Tutu 9. 20 (for) Nesag 10. 20 (for) the son(s) of Artu 11. 30 (for) Ur-sag-Utu 12. 20 (for) the barber(?) 13. Day 11. 14. Month: Šu-numun.
Our translation engine — Fable 5.1. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] ninda asz-dar-bad3 1(gesz2) 3(u) lu2 umma 3(u) dumu dub-sar 3(u) x x x 4(u) ugula adab 2(u) [...]-ur-gal 2(u) ur-nin-gir2-su 2(u) tu-tu 2(u) ne-sag 2(u) dumu ar3-tu 3(u) ur-sag-utu 2(u) szu-i? u4 1(u) 1(asz) iti szu-numun
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — OSP 1, 052. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P216109) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5-1 (2026-09-20/v8-evolved).
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